SCHLETTSTADT  , a

town of Germany, in the imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine, on the Ill; 26 m . S. of Strassburg by the railway to Basel . Pop . (19o5) 9700 . It possesses two fine Roman Catholic churches, a Protestant church, numerous remains of its old walls and some quaint houses of the 15th and 16th centuries . It has a theatre, a municipal library, a gymnasium, and other educational establishments . The Roman Catholic churches are the cathedral church of St George, a fine Gothic building founded in the 13th century, and the church of St Fides, dating from the 11th century . Its industries comprise wire-drawing, tanning and saw-milling, and there is a considerable trade in wine, fruit and other agricultural produce . Schlettstadt is a place of very early origin . It was a royal residence in Carolingian times and became a free town of the Empire in the 13th century . In the 15th century it was the seat of a celebrated academy, founded by the humanist Rodolphus Agricola, which contributed not a little to the revival of learning in this part of Germany; Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of its students . In 1634 the town came into the possession of France, and it was afterwards fortified by Vauban .

It offered little resistance, however, to the Germans in 187o, and the fortifications have since been razed . The Hoh-Konigsburg, a

great castle standing at an elevation of 2475 ft., was presented to the emperor William II. by the town of Schlettstadt in 1899, and was completely restored in 1908 . The site is first mentioned as bearing a castle in the 8th century . See Naumann, Die Eroberung von Schlettstadt (Berlin, 1876) ; and J . Geny, Die Reichstadt Schlettstadt 1490–1536 (Freiburg i . B . 1900) .